


Beautiful

by thebestoftimes



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, One Shot, and it is actually somewhat good, death of bahorel, i wrote this on a plane having gotten only like four hours of sleep in several days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebestoftimes/pseuds/thebestoftimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Bahorel lies dying at the barricade, he has time to think of only one thing: Jehan. His angel, Jehan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful

                He was beautiful, my Jehan.

                Beautiful in his words, in the way they captivated my every breath. The lovely things he would tell me, making ordinary life seem like a dream. His poems, many of which he wrote about me, portraying me in a much softer light than I’d have ever thought possible. The ugly sides of me-and how many there were!-faded when left to his eyes and pen. The minute details, so easily overlooked, he would dwell on, spending entire stanzas glorifying my slight freckles, the way my smile was lopsided, the exact pattern of calluses on my hands.

                He would sing to me, sweet, long ballads of love. There were songs of love like ours: forbidden, secret, and all too precious. Then, songs of flings, of simple happiness that was less precious by far to me, but that he enjoyed the notion of. Somehow I never believed that ours could have such a happy ending as was told in the tunes.

                He was beautiful in the way he moved. When he walked, you’d think the world was made of paper and thinly spun glass. He treated everything as though it may shatter at any second, though his touch was more velvety soft than the breath of a kitten.

                I should know, for those delicate fingers and palms had caressed my face on so many occasions.

                He walked with such delicacy and grace into my apartment on those special nights. The nights where he’d slip in at a lost hour and find me, still awake, wishing for him my side. And he’d meet my lips with ones of silk and I’d pull him down beside me, our arms tangling tightly around each other, lying in each other’s embrace. And there we would stay, all night locked together, kissing and touching and whispering sweet nothings.

                He even gave sweet nothings substance, my Jehan.

                He told me, during each starlit encounter, that I was perfect. He wove his words so skillfully that he nearly made me believe it. But then I would look him in the eye and see what truly is perfection, and know how far from it I was. He’d reassure me, quietly but urgently, that I was a god, but I denied it and loudly forced the thoughts away from us both. He loved me too much, more than anyone should.

                I suppose, then, that it is true how angels can so love sinners. Being the latter, I have seen it, and felt it, and known it, and the one thing I could say was that it was beautiful. Beautiful, like my angel.

                All this flashes before my mind at the feeling of the bullet rip into my chest. I fall, cascading through the furniture and thudding to a rest on the cobblestone street. It is slick with blood, soaking through my clothes, the smell of it flooding my nostrils. My eyes desperately search for Jehan, a last image to take with me, but I cannot see him from where I lay. Instead, I call up a memory, a sensation, of his kiss, the taste and feel and scent of him, a split second of passion and courage and love. I refuse to remember the feeling of either of us pulling away, and so I feel myself depart, still locked in a beautiful kiss with a beautiful angel.


End file.
